Dr Mark Richards Phd

Dr Mark Richards Phd is an active member of Imperial As One

Dr Mark Richards is an active member of Imperial As One – the Universities’ Race Equality Advisory Group, and has been involved in numerous widening participation and outreach programs that aim to encourage more students from diverse backgrounds to pursue science and engineering as career choices.

Dr Mark Richards has a BSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Atmospheric Physics from Imperial College London. After working in finance within the IT industry, Mark returned to Imperial in 2002 as a Post Doctoral Researcher in the High Energy Physics to manage a Technology Transfer program.

He has since co-founded Duvas Technologies, an Imperial College spin-out company specialising in wireless air sensing networks for real-time pollution mapping. Mark is currently a member of the Physics Teaching Staff and also the Schools Liaison Officer for the Physics Department.

As a student, Mark spent most of his spare time Djing as DJ Kemist and more recently founded Xtremix Records, an independent label that provides a remixing service to the music industry.

‘I love to experiment with sound waves (Dj & remixing) in much the same way as I enjoy research into the behaviour of light waves (spectroscopy), both can stimulate the mind and provide a deeper insight into our physical world but from very different perspectives.’ he says.

Physicist, entrepreneur and father Mark Richards is concerned about the environment and in particular what we expose our children to.

He wants people to know just how bad that pollution is so we think more carefully about our lifestyles and travel methods. Over 50,000 deaths each year in the UK are attributed to air pollution.

So he has developed a handy machine which can monitor air quality and set up a company to sell it.

“Just as you wouldn’t choose to drink a glass of dirty water, you wouldn’t choose to breathe in dirty air,” Mark explains. “With my physics, I’ve managed to develop something real, something useful and something that helps to improve the quality of life for my family by allowing them to see the air they breathe.”

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